The European Commission has published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) on October 14th, a Call for Proposals concerning the 2009 work programme “People” of the 7th EC Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Activities (2007-2013) for the coordination and support Researchers' Night actions.

The Specific Programme “People”, which implements part of the 7th EC Framework Programme (VII FP), aims to stimulate people to enter into the profession of researcher, strengthening, quantitatively and qualitatively, the human potential in research and technology in Europe, supporting European researchers to stay in Europe, as well as attracting foreign researchers into the Europe, in order to make the EU more attractive for research in general.

The FP7-PEOPLE-2009-NIGHT Call for Proposals, aims to increase researcher's public recognition and enhance their role in the society, by means of a Researchers' Night, as one of the Marie Curie actions.

This funding scheme allows for two different types of actions to be financed:

• “Co-ordination (or networking) actions” aimed at coordinating research activities and policies.
• “Support actions" aimed at contributing to the implementation of the Framework Programmes and the preparation of future Community research and technological development policy or the development of synergies with other policies, or to stimulate, encourage and facilitate the participation of SMEs, civil society organisations and their networks, small research teams and newly developed or remote research centres in the activities of the thematic areas of the Cooperation programme. Support actions normally focus on one specific activity and often one specific event.

This action is addressed to any legal entity or partnership of entities in the Member States and Associated countries (Albania, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Iceland, Israel, Liechtenstein, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey) meeting certain minimum conditions.

Budget and applications deadline

The indicative budget for 2009 call for Researcher's Night is 3 M€. The final budget awarded, following the evaluation of projects, may vary up to 10% of the total value of this call.

Applications may be submitted up to January 14th, 2009, at 17:00, Brussels local time, through the the Electronic Proposal Submission Service (EPSS).

Further informations as well as the relevant documents for  FP7-PEOPLE-2009-NIGHT Call for Proposals, can be downloaded from the CORDIS website.